Veteran American journalist Ivy McLemore is the author of The Real Story Behind Mysterious Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto, a thought-provoking, 382-page long book offering a detailed account of his search for, and the probable discovery of, Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin.
Ivy and I sat down to discuss his book’s proposition and the mysteries surrounding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. Read on!
Thank you, Ivy, for showing up for this interview. Can you briefly tell us about yourself?
I was raised in newsrooms. My father worked 42 years for The Associated Press. I became an AP correspondent at the age of 16. After graduating with a BA in journalism from the University of Houston, I developed my interview and investigative skills during 14 years as an award-winning reporter and executive editor with The Houston Post.
After leaving the newspaper business, I was senior director of corporate communications for AIM Investments, one of the world's leading independent investment management firms and the top-performing mutual fund company of the 1990s, as ranked by Barron’s.
In 20 years at AIM and its successor Invesco, I was responsible for media relations, internal communications, business continuity communications, executive communications, fund shareholder relations, media training, and assignments in marketing and advertising.
I was appointed to a five-year term as chair of the Investment Company Institute’s Public Communications Committee for his strategic counsel on crisis communications for the US mutual fund industry during the 2003–2004 mutual fund scandals.
The ICI’s Board of Governors unanimously asked me to extend my term for an unprecedented sixth year after leaving Invesco, I was managing director of brand marketing and communications at Guggenheim Partners in New York. I frequently worked with Guggenheim Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd, who I considered the most intuitive investor I’ve ever met, and who was the first person I told outside my office that I had found Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2018, I moved one block away from Guggenheim’s New York offices on Madison Avenue and founded Ivy McLemore & Associates, a marketing and PR firm. I have counseled and media-trained hundreds of executives and investment professionals.
Hall of Fame pitcher and all-time career strikeout leader Nolan Ryan called me the best writer who covered him during his 27-year career. I became an official scorer for Major League Baseball at the age of 19, a position I held in five different decades, and I voted in 29 consecutive annual ballots for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
My LinkedIn profile lists more than 990 endorsements from colleagues in 49 different communications skill. I wrote People Are The Product: A History of AIM as a special project for Ted Bauer, whose $40 million gift in 2000 established the University of Houston’s C. T. Bauer College of Business.
In your book, Finding Satoshi, you described Bitcoin as the gateway to a new era of global finance. Does Satoshi consider Bitcoin a tool for economic singularity?
No, not at all!
You pointed out two spectacular events, the Mt. Gox hack and the Ross Ulbricht arrest, as the earliest blows to Bitcoin’s reputation. Does this surmise that Bitcoin is inherently flawed?
In 2019, Satoshi told me the purpose of his life after a very serious back operation and his own contemplated suicide. He said he wanted to give the world a better version of Bitcoin, one that is not victimized by “money monsters.”
Mt. Gox was a security hack because insufficient capital had been spent on security for clients’ accounts. And, Ross Ulbricht’s development of the Silk Road was not a Bitcoin problem; it was a criminal act. FTX is not a case of a Bitcoin problem; it is a case of insufficient compliance safeguards in place to protect clients from alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
I recently interviewed Craig Wright about his claims to Satoshi Nakamoto's throne. While there's no conclusive evidence yet, do you think Craig is Satoshi?
My book Finding Satoshi gave Craig Steven Wright the benefit of a doubt, but 99% of the evidence in the book makes it clear he is not Satoshi Nakamoto. I am now 100% sure Wright is not Satoshi; he’s the George Santos of Bitcoin, a serial falsifier. In my conversations with Satoshi, he often referred to Wright as a muppet, which is British slang for a stupid person.
Craig Wright is no more Satoshi Nakamoto than I am a gold medalist in both the pole vault and the 100 meters at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
What is your major takeaway from the Bitcoin Trial of The Century involving Craig and Dave Kleiman's estate?
It’s hardly the Bitcoin Trial of the Century. It proved nothing about Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity or anything about the Tulip Trust or Bitcoin and left Wright owing $100 million to the Kleiman estate, which mushroomed to $143 million months later.
Has Wright paid any of it? Not that I’ve seen. The Kleiman family should be happy they’re getting anything since Wright and Dave Kleiman had nothing to do with the creation of Bitcoin.
Did you rule out The Genesis Block and the time stamp evidence in your investigation?
I didn’t rule out the Genesis Block in my investigation. In fact, when Satoshi and I met for the first time in Manchester, England in July 2019, he told me, “On January 3, 2009, I looked at The Times newspaper and saw the headline that I hinted at in the Genesis Block code.” The fact Satoshi used that headline that only appeared in England print editions of The Times that day and not online, was among the major pieces of evidence that Satoshi lived in England when he created Bitcoin. My book Finding Satoshi and Episode 3 of my weekly Solving Bitcoin’s Biggest Mystery Podcast has more info.
As far as timestamps are concerned, I maintain that all timestamp evidence of any kind in every case is inadmissible because timestamps are easily falsified or manipulated.
One of Bitcoin’s early developers, Jim Blasko, told me in an interview that Satoshi Nakamoto is a group of anonymous people. I dare you to disagree with him.
Dare accepted!
Blasko said in October 2022 that he recovered the original code by doing some light browser hacking. Blasko might have said Satoshi is a group of anonymous people because he had no facts whatsoever that would prove Satoshi’s identity. I suggest Blasko read my book and listen to my podcasts, after which I’ll meet him at any place at any time to debate my many facts against his futile supposition.
You have a long, impressive list of Satoshi suspects or potential candidates if you like. Who among them is the most credible and why?
Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of Finding Satoshi tell why the 40+ suspects identified since Bitcoin’s creation in 2009 - including Hal Finney, Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, Nick Szabo, and the George Santos of Bitcoin (Craig Wright) - are NOT Satoshi Nakamoto.
The real Satoshi Nakamoto is a native of Pakistan who immigrated to England before he created Bitcoin and whose name and photo can be found in my book Finding Satoshi. One interesting fact, however, is that Hal Finney had more to do with the creation of Bitcoin than many others have.
Satoshi’s writing style being frankly British is consistent with what you were told about his possible British origin. Can you elaborate more on what you believe?
Episode 8 of the Solving Bitcoin’s Biggest Mystery Podcast (available on Spotify and most major platforms) will address what Satoshi described to me as “writing in Satoshi mode.” Here’s a sneak preview of one image of a few examples that will be posted in the transcript for Episode 8, which will be posted on March 28 and available on
Sysres was the anonymous individual - perhaps Satoshi himself - who communicated with me on Satoshi’s behalf only on Skype texts in May-June 2019. Itstark is the Skype name Satoshi used in his communications with me over seven months. The three words that best describe the Satoshi Nakamoto I know are shy, secretive, and sincere, which is the focus of Episode 6 of the Solving Bitcoin’s Biggest Mystery Podcast, to be posted on March 14.
Any parting words?
Simple! When it comes to the identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto – either accept the long-awaited truth and forego the twin evils of amateur speculation and unfounded opinion …
